Why inches you ask?  I noticed that your name is not listed in the current
directory of membership to the Society for Historical Archaeology, so I
assume that you are a prehistorian.  For you perhaps there is not need to
use an inch scale.  However, the culture I am interested in measured in
inches, feet, miles, measured in pints, quarts, gallons and other
non-metric systems.  Why would I use centimeters in my study English
ceramics or measure American made bottles in anything other than ounce
capacity when all of the historical documents related to these artifacts
give the measurements in the English scales.  I am probably wasting my
breath trying to explain this to you Geoff, however, I feel that your are
being very short sighted in your response to the use of inches in the study
of the past.  For me there is nothing quite as irritating as seeing a
report on English ceramics giving the dimensions in centimeters.

George L. Miller